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AC10 - Environmental Design Teaching Model

Written by: CIC Start Online

"Environmental Design Teaching Model" by Edinburgh College of Art and IES Ltd

SUMMARY

The ‘IES Education’ Project was funded through a £3000 CIC Start Online Academic Consultancy Grant. This enabled researchers from the School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh work with Research Officers at IES Glasgow to develop a version of the IES-VE environmental analysis programme, tailored to the needs of undergraduate Environmental Design teaching.

The CIC grant enabled the researchers to have a series of meetings assess the relevant parts of the existing IES–VE programme dealing with Climate and Location, aspects of Lighting, and Thermal analysis that could be written into a student worksheet for teaching principles of environmental physics and its assessment within building models. It also enabled Dr Uduku, to present the ‘beta’ student version of the worksheet and relevant parts of the IES-VE programme to Environmental Design Academics at Architecture Schools in Scotland and also in Liverpool.

The ‘beta’ version of the IES-VE education worksheet was successfully developed, with a number of key conceptual issues related to its use and presentation within an Architectural education identified. This included an accompanying set of pre-designed building models available for student import and use, within the IES-VE programme. General feedback from the Lecturers at Universities visited was positive, and there was also useful feedback with which to improve the further development of the programme.

The beta version of the IES education worksheet and the IES Gaia package is now being installed in all four Schools of Architecture in Scotland and also at the School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. Feedback is awaited from the students who are currently ‘trialling’ the programme.

Dr Uduku and the University of Edinburgh research team will be seeking further funding to finance a research position to develop the programme further, taking into account student needs and teaching pedagogy in Environmental Design.